Analyzing Gamified Solutions — Memrise!

Published in

ART + marketing

9 min readDec 20, 2016

This is an article from my Analyzing Gamified Solutions series. Make sure to check out my other articles in the series :

Looking for the most efficient ways to learn has always been a passion of mine. I believe that everything can be learned just by creating logical connections between the known and the unknown. I used that belief to learn how to solve rubik's cube blindfolded or to memorize a deck of cards and reorganize it later blindfolded in 2 weeks. Whereas I was motivated by my belief, Memrise focuses on the actual science behind it. By connecting fun, science and community they have created a perfect example of an enjoyable learning tool with perfectly balanced gamification to support the learning process.

Note that Memrise has both a mobile application and a PC learning tool. They differ from each other in various ways so just to clarify — this review is done based on a Android version 2.9_3901 of Memrise.

Welcome to the game of Memrise

As always I will break up my analysis as follows:

Why is gamification implemented?
How well is gamification applied?
What I would have done differently?

Why is gamification implemented?

There is enough research to confidently say that gamification helps to make learning more efficient by tackling main causes of boredom and by maximising engagement and retention.

“If we only had as much fun learning as we have gaming”

Learning will be perceived as boring as long as we imagine studying being consuming the information in front of us behind a desk. Replacing “studying” with “learning new information” changes our perception of how boring it might be because the latter indicates exploring and discovering which is much more interesting than sitting and focusing.

Gamification turns learning into a journey of exploration, achievements and triumph.

How well is gamification applied?

Memrise has utilized different types of features that are usually seen in games without focusing on the points, badges and leaderboards. It does an excellent job of thinning the line between learning and playing.

Seamless start

Prompting user for an action during onboarding is by far one of my favourite techniques. Not just guiding the user between different screens but actually giving him control of the game before he even realises he is playing. In Memrise you start translating words as a part of onboarding process.

Throughout a introductory cutscene, you can hear youtubers asking “Am I in control now?”

This approach works because:

It’s much harder to quit than it is to start — Have you ever finished a game of Dota or League of Legends thinking “Yeah I’ll go for one more.” Keeping the user in the flow of gaming is easy but getting him into it is hard.
The Naked Man — Yes, I’m talking about Season 4 Episode 9 of How I Met Your Mother . Prompting an action without any specific reason why not to take it, turns the “I’m not sure if I want to invest in it” to “Oh well… why not.”
Instant benefits — People will pay for anything as long as they get it now(eg Spotify and Netflix). It allows using the application for its benefits instantly after downloading.
*Influencing user's path — After the first few interactions the user is more likely to do whatever he is prompted, because he is already in the flow of following what the application suggests.
Invested in it — The user has already learned a few words before finishing onboarding. Downloading another application suggests they will start all over again.
Finish with a goal in place — After the intro, the user is left with a goal and some progress made towards it and knows exactly what has to be done to achieve it.

*Do not ask for reviews or ratings relying on this notion as it breaks the flow and the focus of onboarding.

I would use this approach in any gamified application. Period.

Leveling

Mesmerise has illustrated a user journey in learning a language by connecting levels with specific points in the journey. For example levels 2, 3 and 4 are called “I Come in Peace”, “Being Human”, and “First Contact.” Those descriptions already give an understanding of what will be learned in those levels. They also make sense in the narrative standpoint as these are all stages of infiltrating the alien race.

The journey is illustrated similarly to PixelJunk monsters where completing a level gives access to the next level on the path. It helps to promote engagement to have a clear vision of the goals and what will be achieved later in the game

I took PixelJunk Monsters as an example because they don’t use only a linear path. There are sidetracks that the user can take to discover new parts of the world. This is a small adjustment that promotes engagement within explorers and achievers.

Minigames

The whole learning process is divided into minigames. Small groups of tasks that upon completion conclude with an end screen and a review of the performance.

Those are not minigames by definition but by their function — to create variety in an otherwise linear experience of learning words. In terms of gameplay there is actually almost no difference between Classic Review and Difficult Words or Classic Review and Listening Skills. Besides the difference in the prompted words the mechanics are exactly the same but this division is crucial to keep engagement. It doesn’t feel monotone as the user does something different every time.

The exception is Speed Review which is more like an actual minigame where the user has to translate words in a fixed amount of time. Mistranslating or running out of time depletes 1 out of 3 attempts. Translating all the words results in a “victory” while running out of attempts is a “defeat”.

Although playing the game is engaging, the ending has a few flaws. Firstly the score is not foremost to the user. Just saying the word “high score” is not enough — the numeric value of the score has to be promoted. After ~50 games, I don’t know what my high score is. Secondly the victory screen doesn’t make the user feel victorious. It basically says “do better next time”. Lastly besides “Continue” there is no call to action to share my success with friends or go straight to the next assignment. Similarly there is no “Try again” when not succeeding.

Narrative

I have mentioned the great use of narrative in Memrise before but upon reaching level 4 is where it truly shines. Level 4 is called “First Contact” and a new game mode appears upon reaching it where the user has to talk to an enemy agent who is undercover as a native in the Spanish Universe.

With a perfect timing, great narrative, real life feeling and a level of difficulty, this is one of the most notable features in the game.

Perfect timing — After level 3 the user has discovered most of the features in the game and words to learn become less exciting. At this point engagement starts to drop and Memrise introduces the “First contact” mission. It picks the user right back up and gives them a new and exciting goal.

Great narrative — Memrise never lets go of its initial narrative and storytelling. Eventually you will just want the little guy to arrive to the planet…

Real life feeling — It’s a scripted dialogue that feels like a conversation that can happen in real life. By being successful in this mission there's a real confidence boost of the ability to speak the language

Level of difficulty — There’s a high chance the user fails the first few attempts but doesn’t feel hopeless doing so. It’s actually refreshing to know that the 50 word streak in Word Review game doesn’t mean anything unless you know how to form sentences with them.

Points Badges, Leaderboards and Ranks

“Surprisingly” the most obvious Gamification elements have flaws. It feels that the following elements were just applied without thinking how to use them to raise engagement. It feels that the elements are used without a purpose…

Points —Points are not something you track in this game as there are very few screens that show the user his score in the first place. I find it weird, considering they make up the leaderboard.

Badges —Memrise has a section designed for badges but their functionality is far from it. Besides being all private, there only seems to be 3 total badges out of which 1 is the name of your rank, the other is highest streak and third is for buying the full version of Memrise.

Leaderboards — Faces the flaw of showing the players with the highest score and the user on the same page.

Ranks — Although being personalized with unique memrise flavor names, there is no way to understand the level value of the ranks. Which is the highest — Memgineer, Mentor or Memmoth ?

Community

Learning with friends seems more fun than doing it alone as friendly competition and encouragement is great for engagement. In Memrise the user has the option to follow all of his facebook friends but doesn’t follow anyone by default. It shouldn’t be optional to see your friends progress but it should be optional to hide someone progress you are not interested in.

What I would have done differently?

Lose the points

It's one of the few occasions in Gamification where points actually don’t serve that much purpose. Especially because Memrise already has a built in point system — words learned, which can easily replace the point system. Having said that, it probably doesn’t affect engagement — it just approaches it from a different angle.

Add hidden paths to courses

Showing hints of secret paths in the journey would create more ways to explore and discover the journey. There could be an alien popping up in the middle of the game saying “Pssst… Answer the next question wrong to see something special” that takes the user to a “Slang” level where he would unlock new slang words that are not shown by default.

Reward the user more

There should be more badges and achievements in the game to collect and they should be visible as unlockables. That would again create more engagement across different player types compared to having one linear scoring system.

Conclusion

Knowing I want to do a review of a gamified learning tool, I thought to spend a day playing around with it and taking screenshots of Memrise. 6 days later I’m still learning spanish and I’m having fun doing so. That is the ultimate goal for any gamified app — to make people want to use it even if they specifically didn’t intend to and Memrise is doing an excellent job of achieving it.